Category Archives: Michael Adams Wants To Rule The World

It’s official. Booch goes to ‘Bama: “With that announcement came the predictable, obvious and necessary jokes. The coach with the five-star heart is joining a program with five-star players. The man who coined the phrase “champions of life” is now a member of the national champions. A former SEC coach is now going to be getting coffee for the greatest coaching legend of our generation.”

Auburn’s shitty finish to last season “left a chip on our shoulder”? What, you’re mad at yourselves for crappy play? Does that mean you’ll take it out on each other in spring practice? Geez, Malzahn can’t even do motivation right.

Evidently Jon Fabris was at spring practice yesterday. I hope they kept him away from Rodrigo Blankenship, who definitely does not need a directional kicking challenge.

There’s a new professional football league on the horizon that intends to play in the spring with players who don’t make it on NFL rosters. I mention this because of one marketing element I wholeheartedly endorse: there will be no TV timeouts and 60 percent fewer commercials. Praise Jesus and let’s hope it turns out to be the start of a trend.

Jacob Eason speaks (h/t): “Honestly I couldn’t tell you. But if I’d not gotten hurt and I finished out the season I doubt we’d be talking right now. But that’s the thing about football. It’s an injury-related sport, things are going to happen and it did but I couldn’t be in a better spot.”

Jason Butt drops an intriguing note in his story about Natrez Patrick: “Patrick’s December arrest marked the third time he was booked on a marijuana-related charge. In the past, that would have been automatic grounds for dismissal. However, Georgia’s drug policy changed recently to allow for certain offenders who are dealing with addiction not to be subject to removal from the team.” We’re not living in Michael Adams’ world anymore and that’s a great thing for Georgia football, not to mention it’s a more enlightened way to deal with kids struggling with addiction problems.

Dan Mullen explains that paying college athletes wouldn’t work because they’d have to pay taxes… you know, like every other hard-working American — including Dan Mullen — already does, which would put them in a financial hole. Sounds rough. (It’s also probably bullshit.) Rhetorical question: would Mullen be able to overcome his scruples if at some future date players got paid?

Drew Lock on Derek Dooley’s new offense: “It’s more complicated of an offense but I do think it’s easier.” Whatever you say, Drew.

BRAD WOLVERTON: So you’ve seen this rash of cases involving academic misconduct recently. You had Syracuse, you’ve got UNC under investigation. Not to comment on anyone in particular, but what do you think has contributed to that? Some people say it’s actually the tougher standards on the front end.

MICHAEL ADAMS: Well, those people and I would disagree. I think there are two things that are compelling to me. When I was chair of the executive committee of the NCAA in some of the last years of the late Myles Brand, who was a very close friend of mine, we put a lot of money into enforcement. I think that was a smart thing. So I think, on one hand, some of the cases that are coming forward now are because the NCAA is doing a better job investigation-wise and sort of ferreting out what’s going on. And then secondly, I think there are some coaches out there unfortunately — I’ve met some of them — who’ve decided that their way to success was to cheat. And I think without having deep animus toward them, which is sometimes hard, I do think the message has to be sent to them that the cost of cheating in the NCAA is not worth it. And I think until that messages is internalized, we may have some more cases like this.

Nary a word about administrative accountability there. Although at least he admits he’s met cheating coaches before, so he’s not as if he’s living in total denial.

“I said to coach Dooley, ‘Would you like for me to get Jim Harrick in the pool,” Adams said. “He said, ‘Yes. I think the better the pool, the better.’ We interviewed three finalists. Coach Dooley made a recommendation to me for whatever reasons. I think, and still think, that he and coach Harrick got along very well.”

Dooley’s first choice was then Delaware coach Mike Brey, who turned down the chance and eventually landed at Notre Dame. Harrick won the national title at UCLA in 1995 but was fired the next year over expense reports from a recruiting dinner that violated NCAA rules.

“Ultimately on decisions on the head basketball coach and the football coach, I make the decision only from the standpoint of that was my recommendation to the president,” Dooley said.

Adams said Dooley recommended Harrick twice, the second time after Harrick decided he wanted to stay at Rhode Island before changing his mind.

“I think the AD was involved in the hiring, he played the lead role in hiring Jim Harrick, not once but twice,” Adams said. “I think that I can document all that.”

Adams still calls Harrick “one of the best final-two-minute coaches that I’ve ever seen, and I know enough about basketball to know the difference. I regret what happened to him, but he made mistakes here at a level that would have made it impossible to stay whether I was making that decision or coach Dooley was making that decision. It was just obvious to both of us.”

That wasn’t the only obvious decision Adams and Dooley made about Harrick.

I remember Georgia once hired Jim Harrick without ever calling the ADs at RI or UCLA where he once worked. Stunned me then. Not now. Typical

Now keep in mind that Harrick’s career wasn’t exactly a mystery at that time. He’d already been canned at UCLA – after winning a national title – for falsifying expense reports and asking others to lie about that and at Rhode Island managed to raise a few eyebrows by letting Lamar Odom on to the team after Odom’s departure from UNLV. But nobody at Georgia thought it was wise to pick up the phone and make a couple of calls to get some more background on the guy.

That’s basically how you wind up a few years later with an academic fraud scandal on your hands. Too bad nobody judged Adams by the same standard he judged Harrick.

“I don’t have many regrets,” Adams said during an interview in his north campus office in his final weeks as president before his retirement on June 30. “You want to know what my biggest regret is? Not getting the final five yards against Alabama. To have gone out in the national championship game, and I felt that night that was the national championship game and I think the following events proved me right. I’m not sure I’m over that one yet.”

See? That’s just like you or me or any other slob who didn’t preside over the hire of a man who would preside over an embarrassing academic scandal.

But in Adams’ mind, Harrick doesn’t count as his biggest regret because his hire wasn’t really Adams’ fault.

“I said to coach Dooley, ‘Would you like for me to get Jim Harrick in the pool,” Adams said. “He said, ‘Yes. I think the better the pool, the better.’ We interviewed three finalists. Coach Dooley made a recommendation to me for whatever reasons. I think, and still think, that he and coach Harrick got along very well.”

Dooley’s first choice was then Delaware coach Mike Brey, who turned down the chance and eventually landed at Notre Dame. Harrick won the national title at UCLA in 1995 but was fired the next year over expense reports from a recruiting dinner that violated NCAA rules.

“Ultimately on decisions on the head basketball coach and the football coach, I make the decision only from the standpoint of that was my recommendation to the president,” Dooley said.

Adams said Dooley recommended Harrick twice, the second time after Harrick decided he wanted to stay at Rhode Island before changing his mind.

“I think the AD was involved in the hiring, he played the lead role in hiring Jim Harrick, not once but twice,” Adams said. “I think that I can document all that.”

“I think that I can document all that.” ? Who in the hell talks like that in a beat writer interview?

The sad thing is that he probably did make an effort at the time to document it… just in case.

Weiszer wrote a fair piece, which means what you’d expect. But there is one uncontaminated bit of good news in it. We get a vacation.

Adams, who turned 65 in March on what he called his “Medicare birthday,” plans to take a year off from the university. He said he will spend time at his lake house and travel next year to Australia, New Zealand and California and may write books.

“I think it [a nine-game conference schedule] could happen,” Adams said. “I know more and more conferences are going to that. The fans don’t like the games against some of the competition that we play, and I don’t blame them. It’s one of the reasons I voted against going from the 11th to the 12th game, because I thought it was going to do to us exactly what it has done…”

The fans, hunh…

This is the guy who thought nothing of passing money under the table to Jim Donnan, pushed Vince Dooley into hiring the Harricks and fashioned some of the most restrictive drug and arrest policies in the country for Georgia’s student-athletes, but we’re supposed to believe that Mr. Hands On couldn’t have come back from that meeting where he lost the vote on schedule expansion, picked up the phone and ordered his AD not to schedule another cupcake opponent with that extra game? Sorry, not buying that one.

And is he so caught up in giving the fans what they want that he’s ready to storm the Bastille and push for that ninth conference game? Hell, yea… wait, what?

Adams, whose tenure ends in June 30, will still be a voting member at SEC meetings later this month in Destin. He said he hasn’t decided how he personally feels between staying at eight or going to nine.

“But I think ultimately what will win out is fans are properly tired of seeing two or three really poor games per year,” he said.

No doubt ultimately he’ll take credit for the schedule change when it occurs long after he’s left office. Because he cares.